Nation: Waiting for Deng Xiaoping

Washington prepares for the China summit

A special White House working group, headed by Presidential Assistant Anne Wexler, met almost daily to pore over final details. Administration officials briefed hundreds of U.S. farmers, businessmen and labor leaders on the minutiae of U.S.-Chinese relations. Presidential aides issued a fat silver briefing folder in which more-or-less familiar Chinese names were rendered almost unrecognizable in Peking's own Chinese transliteration system: Teng Hsiao-p'ing, for example, became Deng Xiaoping.

So Washington prepared last week, with the help of a nine-member Chi nese advance delegation from Peking, for the...

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